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The Earl of Harewood

Nephew of George VI who defied convention to pursue a career in the arts and achieved lasting success with English National Opera

July 12 2011, 1:01am, The Times

Harewood in 1961, the year in which he took over as director of the Edinburgh Festival, a post he held until 1965UPPA/Photoshot

George Harewood was a young schoolboy at Eton when he decided that he wanted to devote his life to music. This was considered a little strange for one so closely connected by birth to the Royal Family: his mother, the Princess Royal, was the only daughter of George V. But Harewood used to point back, sometimes a little huffily, to the musical taste of Queen Victoria, to say nothing of Prince Albert.

Perhaps more surprising was that he never aspired to be anything other than a listener. He was apt to describe himself as the world’s worst pianist and wrote that he was “never a practising musician of any merit whatever”. But from his youth he was a great collector. He collected performances whenever and…